"We were up at five o'clock in the morning and you knew something bad was going to happen. There were sirens going then and by 10 o'clock we could not see anywhere around here because of the dust and you couldn't tell what was dust and what was fires."

The Ash Wednesday fires were the worst bushfire disaster in Australian history until Black Saturday in 2009.

The Ash Wednesday fires were the worst bushfire disaster in Australian history until Black Saturday in 2009.

ABC TV

CFS volunteer Russell Grear did most of his work that day in a helicopter, coordinating crew and making observations from the air. He says he was astounded by what he saw.

"There was one fire front that I reckon was 10 kilometres long and there wasn't a soul to be seen in relation to firefighting or anything else," he said.

"People had tried to do what they could to save their houses but it was just moving too fast."

After a wind change, which turned the long fire flank into a massive fire front, the blaze was throwing up so much dust and smoke that Mr Grear and his team were forced to land their chopper in a paddock for two hours while the fire passed.

Country Fire Authority firefighters recall the Melbourne metropolitan area being surrounded by a ring of bushfires.

The 1983 Ash Wednesday fires burning down the hills behind Clare, north of Adelaide

"Gas cylinders could explode, roots of trees burned underground. As we bucketed water over scorched plants in a friend's historic garden, someone warned that the cores of giant cypress trees nearby were smouldering and could 'go up' at any time.

"People were telling and re-telling their fire stories. Of being separated from children, of getting phone calls saying goodbye as an impossible fire front approached. One mother had sung nursery rhymes for hours as she held her children in a dam. One man was ashamed that he had cried because 'I never cry'. A silence surrounded any mention of lost pets.

"I remember feeling an irrational anger when people in Melbourne complained of ash in their swimming pool or the smell of the fires – or even spoke of anything other than the fire. Emotional security in those early days lay in the shared experience of the mountain. The 'stress caravan', staffed from a Melbourne hospital, initially closed its door about 6:00pm each evening. Someone laughed about psychologists drawing that arbitrary line. But a disaster on that scale was no doubt new to them as well."

Firefighters in East Gippsland were worn out before Ash Wednesday even started. They had been battling a huge blaze near Cann River all summer and were looking forward to some time off. The chief ranger for that area at the time, Dennis Matthews, remembers the incident controller bringing the crews together to deliver some bad news.

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